North Korea hit with tough new sanctions in wake of nuclear test

The United Nations Security Council has voted to tighten financial
restrictions on North Korea in response to the country's third nuclear test.

The US-drafted resolution, which was approved unanimously by the 15-nation council, was the product of three weeks of negotiations between the United States and China after the test on February 12.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, welcomed the council's move, saying in a statement that the resolution "sent an unequivocal message to (North Korea) that the international community will not tolerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons."

The US said that the sanctions would "bite hard."

"Taken together, these sanctions will bite and bite hard," said Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN. "They increase North Korea's isolation and raise the cost to North Korea's leaders of defying the international community."

Although North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs and pre-emptive strikes, it is not thought to have mastered the ability to produce a warhead small enough to put on a missile capable of reaching the US (Photo: AFP/GETTY)

Pyongyang has made such threats before but it has increased the number and scale of its verbal attacks in recent weeks.

"Now that the US is set to light a fuse for a nuclear war, (our) revolutionary armed forces... will exercise the right to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors," said a government statement reported by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

It added: "We gravely warn that at a time when we cannot avoid a second Korean War, the UN Security Council, which served as the US puppet in 1950 and made Korean people harbour eternal grudges against it, must not commit the same crime again."

The North Korean military also announced it will rip up the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War if the joint US-South Korean drill goes ahead as planned on Monday.

Because the Korean War combatants never signed a peace treaty, the two Koreas remain technically at war, with the armistice operating as a ceasefire pact.

Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's state newspaper, warned of an imminent conflict.

"With the armistice nullified, it would be no surprise if a global thermonuclear war breaks out," it said.

"The war will not be confined to the Korean peninsula," it added, referring to Pyongyang's claim to have rockets capable of striking the US.

Although North Korea boasts of its nuclear programme, it is not thought to have yet produced a warhead small enough to fit on a missile capable of reaching the US.

A successful long-range rocket launch in December suggested progress in ballistic technology but without the re-entry capability required for a genuine inter-continental ballistic missile.

It is believed to have obtained enough nuclear fuel, however, for a handful of crude nuclear devices.

This is also not the first time the North has threatened to do away with the armistice agreement, having made a similar promise in 2009.

*Sanctions*

Amnesty International meanwhile called for an independent commission to investigate human rights violations in North Korea, after releasing a report detailing expansions in the republic's prison camps.

Analysts found that the existence of a new 12m perimeter fence around a valley known to house several civilian villages.

The area inside the fence also includes new buildings thought to be huts for workers and guard towers.

"We expected to find a new or expanded prison camp. What we found is in some ways even more worrisome," said Frank Jannuzi, deputy executive director on Amnesty USA.